Of Grace and Homemade Cookies
by CakuRamen
Summary: He was the angel who'd listened to every single one of Sam Winchester's prayers, and found his abrupt humanity gave him a chance to reply. Post-S8 oneshot.


Of Grace and Homemade Cookies  
_The Story of Yaasriel, Fallen Angel_

He was the angel who'd listened to every single one of Sam Winchester's prayers, and his abrupt humanity gave him a chance to reply. Post-S8 oneshot, based on a tumblr prompt, and also my first Supernatural fic. I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Falling, he decided, was a strange sensation indeed.

He'd never felt such a thing before. Though he'd lived a long time indeed, longer than many of his siblings, he'd rarely felt the need to leave his little corner of Heaven to go meddling in the human world.

And then all of a sudden, he was torn from the little garden he'd built for himself, away from the pile of scraps he busied himself with day after day, away from _familiar_ and into _incomprehensible_.

_Poof_, he would say later, _just like that._

But falling was very much not a _poof_, more of a gut-wrenching terror and loss of control that seemed to take all the time in the world yet no time at all. One minute safe, next minute plummeting like a stone.

He realized he wasn't alone by the bright streaks in the inky sky falling beside him, and that was a perversely comforting thought for about five seconds, until the _fiery agony mindless torture blazing hellfire _consumed him, and blackness became bliss.

_0-O-0_

He woke up to a tickling sensation on his feet and the relaxing, repetitive whooshing of waves. _Too quiet to be ocean waves_ was his only thought before he noticed the cold.

He was shivering.

It was unfamiliar. It seemed he was experiencing a great many new things this day.

He knew what shivering was, recognized what it should feel like and identified it from the barely-clothed desert humans he'd taken to watching when he was much younger and more prone to on-a-whim travels to Earth. They had been nice people, keeping to themselves and keeping one another safe.

Then another tribe had nearly wiped them out, and he'd decided not to leave Heaven anymore, not if he could help it.

Above the quiet waves, his ears picked up something else. Opening his eyes, he squinted in the early-morning gray, even though it wasn't very bright, and became aware that the something was words.

"...boy, boy! You awake, boy?"

Something grabbed him about the shoulders. He tried to pull away, but his back hurt and he could do little more than whimper and cough a bit, because there was water clogging his lungs.

"C'mon, boy, we gotta move you. Can't be sittin' out here half naked this early, in this weather, you're goin'ta freeze."

The voice faded out, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up again with the heavy weight of a something soft on his chest. He sat there for a moment, blinking, trying desperately to recall where he was of how he got there when a human woman walked in and gasped in surprise.

"You're awake! Ernest," she called, setting down the basket of clothes she had been carrying, "your boy's awake!"

The next second, the woman was fluffing pillows beneath his back and urging him to lie back and relax. A man, presumably Ernest, walked in, wearing a big blue raincoat and slick boots. Both he and the woman had gray hair, though he had a beard and the woman's was done up in a loose knot.

"What were you doing?" the woman was asking. "Where is your family? How'd a nice-looking young man like yourself wind up washed up on a beach?"

"S'not much of a beach, Edna," Ernest reminded her gruffly, "only a bit of lakeshore. Rules out any big boating accidents. Prob'ly just a dumb kid out on a canoe or somethin'."

He just stared blankly at the both of them, still not entirely sure why he was there in the first place.

"Why am I here?"

The pair looked a bit surprised, but the woman's quickly morphed to sympathy. "Ernest found you, washed up on the side of the lake," Edna said kindly. "Do you not remember? I'll bet you hit your head, poor dear..."

"I did not, to my knowledge, suffer any cranial injuries," he replied. "If I had—" _I would have been healed already_ was what he wanted to say, but he couldn't feel his healing abilities at work, or even there at all. It was if they'd just disappeared, leaving him feeling sore and battered on this couple's (rather hideously patterned, he noted) sofa, hands clenched in a hand-sewn quilt.

A more pressing thought occurred to him. "Where are my pencils? My scraps?"

"I don't know where any of your things are," Ernest answered. "All I found was you, lyin' there like a half-drowned cat."

"I cannot complete my duty without my pencils," he continued, as calmly as possible while trying to convey the pencils' utmost importance.

"Don't worry, we'll find you some new pencils," Edna muttered reassuringly, easing him back onto his makeshift bed before he even registered that he'd sat up straight again. "What's your name, dear?"

"I must find my pencils. They're _Holy Pencils_, and I cannot complete my duty without them," he repeated, exasperation bordering on panic.

"That's nice, dear," she agreed, "but you've already had a trying day and it's not even lunchtime. But we could find your family if you told me your name, okay?"

Images of shooting stars flashed behind his eyelids as he closed them, wanting to sigh but restraining himself. Such shows of grief were best kept to himself. "My family is most assuredly all gone," he replied. "My name is Yaasriel, and I am an angel of the Lord."

The room fell into silence. The older couple glanced at each other. "Figures I'd pick up a guy who's ten buckets of crazy," Ernest complained, and stomped out of the room.

"Well, I pray that you'll feel better after a bit of rest, dear," Edna tittered. "You must've hit your head rather hard after all."

_Pray._

He jerked upright again, startling the woman as she tried to arrange the quilt over him. "Sam," he gasped, "do you know Samuel Winchester?"

_0-O-0_

The following day, he found himself on the side of the road with a sack of Edna's homemade cookies and some of Ernest's old clothes, which hung loosely on his (considerably smaller) frame. He was the one who insisted on leaving, but he had absolutely no idea what to do.

Times had changed, and humans had marvelous new ways of getting from place to place, but he still found himself standing still, trying in vain to lift his wings and disappear. Healing his wounds hadn't worked, his pencils were not in his possession, and he couldn't travel.

_I have lost my Grace._

The truth, the moment he acknowledged it, hurt him more than the angry red burn welts on his back where his wings had once been. But he was a calm former angel, and assessed his situation as logically as he could while trying not to freak out.

He clearly had to find shelter, some form of sustenance, and funds with which to purchase goods. Humans came about these things fairly easily from what he understood. But there was only one human he really cared to see.

_Sam Winchester._

Heaven hadn't liked Sam; he was, after all, the boy with the demon blood, treated with reverence as a vital piece in the Apocalypse that never was and disgust as the man who would betray them all as a vessel for Lucifer. He had found it all rather hypocritical, but try telling that to the archangels without getting stabbed with your own knife.

Of course, the Apocalypse was fairly recent. People like Zachariah and Michael had known all along, but everyday folks like him only found out when it was upon them. Yaasriel remembered, as clear as the blue sky in his version of Heaven, the day he found out Sam Winchester of all people was supposed to lead a devil's army to destroy the world.

It had been an ordinary conversation with his brother Tahariel at first, the other messing with his golden curls as he discussed the goings-on in the wider world of angels.

_"Adnachiel's managed to get into a spitting match with Rhamael, despite the fact we always assumed it was impossible to provoke the angel of empathy. Anael has been sent down for some kind of mission, she won't tell me what, and apparently a boy named Samuel Winchester has been announced to Heaven as the Antichrist."_

Yaasriel had sputtered in shock, but Tahariel had misinterpreted the subject of his astonishment.

_"Is it not amazing? Rhamael is still incensed, and he is rather frightening when angry."_

_"No, not that— who did you say is the Antichrist?"_

_"A boy, Samuel Winchester. He and his brother have apparently been groomed for years to unleash Hell on Earth and perform their duties as holy vessels."_

Tahariel had left soon after, leaving Yaasriel reeling in his little garden, where the sunny weather had abruptly turned cloudy. He had only come out of his shock when he heard a familiar voice.

_"Whoever's listening, it's me again. I-I think there might be something wrong with me..."_

_0-O-0_

He exited the truck, feeling rather sick to his stomach from the bumpy ride but thanked the man operating the vehicle anyway, who in turn gave him a smile missing too many teeth to be normal. Under different circumstances, he might have rewarded the man for picking him up off the roadside with oral hygiene assistance; today, such a thing proved impossible.

He had a minor panic attack when he realized that he could have at least given the man some of Edna's homemade cookies but had selfishly saved them for himself. He rationalized this decision with the fact that more sweets wouldn't have done the man's teeth any favors, but still felt a bit guilty.

_But you are not an angel anymore._

Definitely a human now, fitting right in with the crowd of potentially homeless people at the bus depot with his ill-fitting clothes on his scrawny frame and the mop of dark hair that fell to the middle of his neck in tangled curls. He studied his reflection in a grimy window, touching his featured lightly. Even his skin, chalky-pale as it was, looked stretched over sharp cheekbones and bruised in dark circles around his eyes.

His stomach made an angry empty sound, so he sat on a plastic bench and ate cookies until it stopped.

Later, he found a map of bus routes, and discovered that he was currently somewhere in southeastern Idaho. Studying the map, he was pleased to find that it wasn't terribly far to Lebanon, Kansas.

_Strange, the names these humans come up with._

Edna had also been kind enough to give him enough money for a bus fare, though he'd discovered that when he'd presented the lot of it in a crumpled handful to the ticket vendor, only to have half of it handed back to him. He returned it to his pocket with thanks and patiently waited for the bus.

His mind inevitably wandered back to Sam Winchester. No matter what the other angels had said, that boy had been a devout prayer since day one.

_"Hello? Pastor Jim says I should do this, just talk to whoever up in Heaven is listening... Dean thinks it's stupid, but Dad is gone working again and we're staying over at Pastor Jim's and Dad said to be good and Pastor Jim says praying is good, so that's what I'm gonna do."_

Sam Winchester's first prayers had been routed to Yaasriel because they weren't directed at anyone in particular, and everyone always assumed he had spare time (no matter that he was constantly writing). After that, they'd just kept coming because nobody cared to change it.

_"At school there's a boy called Bryce who's being mean. He says our family is weird and I didn't tell Dean because he would get angry at him, and Dad would tell me to take care of it myself which doesn't help. Can you please make him stop?"_

_"Christmas is tomorrow... I know I'm not supposed to be selfish, but can I please ask for just one present..? And maybe a Christmas tree too, it doesn't have to be fancy, just a little fake one would be fine."_

_"Dad and Dean left again, and they won't tell me what they're hunting, only it's not safe for me to come too. Can you please bring them back okay?"_

He was regretful when he found out Sam came from a family of hunters, sad that he couldn't help the polite little boy who always phrased his prayers like secret wishes, things he would never ask of his brother or father. As Sam grew, Yaasriel grew with him to dislike the man he called Dad and admire the bond he so clearly shared with Dean.

But his prayers had taken on a desperate edge as he aged, lost their innocence until they just became vain hopes. But Sam would voice them anyway, trying to stay positive, just looking for happiness. And Yaasriel found himself always listening.

_"My history teacher said that I would do well in college, that I'm smart and dedicated enough to handle it. Nobody's ever said that before, but I don't think Dad would ever let me go. I'm expected to be just like Dean... carrying on the family business."_

_"I got my Stanford acceptance letter today, and they're willing to give me a full ride and everything! I wouldn't need student loans, and Dean wouldn't have to help me pay for it at all, and I promise to work hard to earn all of it! I hope they'll be happy for me, but... thanks, whatever happens."_

_"Today is Dean's birthday. He'll be 23 years old. I want to call him, but I doubt he wants to hear from me."_

"The 2:20 for Salt Lake is here," came a woman's voice, interrupting his thoughts. The ticket vendor from earlier was giving him a sympathetic look as she gestured outside. "You're going to miss it if you don't leave now."

He stood, gathering his food and trying to look composed. "Thank you for your assistance. I shall be going now."

The woman smiled rather bemusedly as he nodded and turned to go. On a whim, he glanced back.

"You wouldn't happen to have any pencils?"

On a bus bound for Salt Lake City that stank of stale cigarettes and ineffective cleaning solution, he allowed himself a small smile as he pulled out the pad of Post-It's the lady had also given him and rested them on his knee. The pencil said Lou's Deli on the side and was far from holy, but it felt absolutely right in his hand.

_0-O-0_

His bus fare money ran out in a place called Paxton, Nebraska. He discovered that it would take sixty-seven hours to get to Kansas on foot, and he didn't think his human body would enjoy such a walk.

Not to mention, these highways were dangerous things. As a human he would surely be flattened if he tried walking on the side of one.

The most frustrating thing he learned about bus transportation was not the frequent stops, but the fact that while something looked close on a map, in reality it was far when the fact that you couldn't travel in a straight line was taken into account. He mentioned this to a lady outside the bus stop in Paxton who had poked his ribs without provocation.

"You're far too skinny, son," she said, her tone joking but her brown eyes serious. "What are you doing here anyway? I ain't never seen you about before."

"Did you know that these busses are unreliable forms of transportation that must follow the guidelines of arbitrary yet random paths to get from place to place?"

She had laughed out loud at that. "Everyone knows that, son. You gotta plan your travel wiser next time. Unless, are you running away?"

He tilted his head quizzically. "I believe that I stated quite clearly that I took a bus. However, I am currently contemplating the possibility of running because I find myself out of funds."

"How much farther have you got to go?"

"Three and a half hours due southeast, to a place called Lebanon, Kansas. I believe it is at the geographical center of this country, correct?"

She smiled and shrugged, tucking a strand of orange hair behind her ear as she shifted her paper bags to her other side. "I don't know that, but I'll tell you what: I own that restaurant over there on the corner, see?" She pointed, and he nodded that yes, he could see the little whitewashed building with its neon _Flo's_ sign. The _o_ was burnt out. "Come do a few jobs for me, and I'll see if I can't get you those funds."

"That seems agreeable."

The woman, presumably Flo, grinned again. "Great. You start by carrying these for me, my arms've gotten sore talking to you."

The restaurant turned out to have tables that wobbled, a counter in dire need of scrubbing, menus torn at the edges, and was run by Flo alone. Her nephew cooked breakfast on most days, her niece waited tables in the summer, and a cousin did the cleaning. Apparently, Flo's family made up a fourth of the town and most of her diner's regulars.

"I do what I can with the place, y'know?" was a all she said.

_"I do what I can to move on, you know? But it's just... so hard, sometimes."_

Yaasriel wondered if Sam frequented run-down diners like this. He had a feeling he did.

_"Dean's off at another bar again, so I've got time. He says he's going to get us some money because the credit cards aren't going through again, but he's probably just going to get drunk and find some girl. But I've got research to do... I had another vision, and I've got to find out what it means soon, before anyone else dies."_

Sam had always felt so responsible, and Yaasriel just wanted to tell him that no, no, it's not your fault but he couldn't figure out how. He tried instead to just help with the little things, like cockroach-free motel rooms and water that always ran hot when Sam wanted it, but there was only so much he could do from Heaven.

"Do you believe in Heaven, Miss Flo?"

The lady, who had been in the midst of unpacking the paper bags of groceries, gave a little half-laugh. "Ain't that a strange thing to go asking a person out of the blue? I don't even know your name."

"My apologies."

Sam hadn't believed in Heaven for himself anymore, not after Dean was sent to Hell on a deal for his life. But the prayers had kept coming.

_"Please let Dean be okay."_

_"Please let Dean be safe."_

_"Please let Dean come back."_

Then one day, they had simply stopped. Yaasriel wrote it off as a brief crisis of faith at first, but the days stretched into months, and for the first time in centuries he seriously considered going down to Earth. Until he heard Sam's voice again, as if it had never left.

_"Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for Dean."_

Dean returning was impossible, or so he thought until Tahariel had visited with news that Castiel had been sent to raise a man from perdition, and all he could think was _thank you, Father, for letting that man be Dean Winchester._

"So what is your name, son?" Flo was speaking again, and he felt a bit guilty for being so distracted.

"My name is Yaasriel," he said, the _and I am an angel of the Lord_ cut off before he could voice it because he wasn't really, not anymore.

"Honestly?" Flo asked, incredulity and amusement tingeing her voice.

"I am always honest." Angels do not lie.

"I think I'll just call you Paul, okay?"

He tilted his head to the side again. "Whatever name you wish to call me is acceptable."

So Yaasriel-now-Paul the angel-now-human found himself with a bucket of soapy water and a mop, and decided to do this new duty to the best of his abilities.

The crumpled Post-It's and the pencil sat at the bottom of his bag, because the four letters of the Ineffable Name he had spent his entire life copying over would just not come out right. He had found himself instead surrounded by little sticky pieces of paper that all bore the words _Sam Winchester Lebanon Kansas_ in careful script where there should have been heavenly power.

_0-O-0_

He remembered as he scrubbed windows how he had tried to convince Heaven's higher-ups that they had it all wrong. He'd left his garden, traveled to the headquarters of sorts where angels tried to run things, just outside the Garden.

_"Samuel Winchester cannot possibly be the Antichrist!"_

One of the archangel Raphael's subordinates, an angel names Shemael, had merely raised an eyebrow.

"_He has been chosen since birth. As a descendent of the Winchester line, it's only natural that he should be the vessel of an archangel."_

_"Surely there's someone else!"_

_"There is no one else,"_ Shemael had explained, fingers steepled. _"The loyal elder brother Dean is the ideal vessel for Michael, and the estranged younger is thus destined to be closest to Lucifer. The marriage of John and Mary Winchester has been planned for centuries for precisely this purpose."_

_"But Samuel Winchester is a devout man, more devout than any others I know of!" _That had surprised Shemael, whose eyes widened a touch. _"I've been listening to his prayers for nearly his whole life, and there is not one ounce of evil in that boy, predestined or not."_

His pleas had been ignored, however, in favor of the bigger picture of ineffability that angels were always so focused on.

_"It was never meant to be, Yaasriel,"_ Tahariel had consoled. _"Accept that it is our Father's will and move on."_

And Yaasriel had caved, because no matter what their Father was always right. Questioning the biggest constant in his life would have been asking for trouble, because that's what Lucifer had done.

_What Sam did._

But Sam could not be Lucifer, could never be Lucifer, not when he had so much empathy despite so little good fortune. But maybe that was why, because Yaasriel couldn't imagine their Father wanting evil to triumph.

_Maybe Sam had to be the vessel because he was the least likely to submit._

_0-O-0_

He had no concept of how much work was enough, and he never did anything by halves, especially not his new duty. Flo had returned a few hours later to find the diner "in better shape than it's ever been!"

"I don't know how you did it, but you're a Godsend, son!" she had exclaimed, shaking her head in awe, and Yaasriel found his lip twitching upwards at the irony of the statement. He spent two more days working in her restaurant and sleeping in the little apartment upstairs, and earned enough money to make it to Kansas.

Except, arriving with nothing would be rude if he hoped to stay. So Flo leant out his services, and Yaasriel found himself as Paxton's new doer of odd jobs. He painted fences, walked pets, even learned how to operate a lawnmower and make strawberry shortcake.

The sound of a siren one afternoon sent him running from stacking boxes at the general store to the site of a kitchen fire, where the residents of the house (a young couple, the wife notoriously terrible at cooking) stood safely in the front yard and the volunteer fire department had already extinguished the blaze.

"Are you all right?" he had asked, approaching them just to be certain, because he couldn't help but feel a sort of protective feeling for this town and its people.

"I'm never baking scones again," the wife had replied through a watery laugh.

"We're both fine, and that's all that matters," her husband continued, and that was that. "Scones be damned."

_"We both got out alive, and that's what matters. Thank you."_

How many times had he heard that phrase?

The Winchesters had more near-death experiences and narrow escapes than any other humans he knew of, yet they were always "fine." An unstable definition of "fine," but fine nonetheless, as long as they had each other.

Despite all that, Sam had died once. He'd gone to Hell to save the world, perfectly willing to offer up his life for the human race, and in repentance.

_"Dean is scared, I can tell, but he shouldn't be. He can have a normal life with Lisa, like he deserves... and I'll get what I deserve."_

Tahariel mentioned once that Dean Winchester had reportedly turned devout once the Apocalypse-that-wasn't ended, but all of his prayers were directed towards Castiel alone. Apparently most were rich in profanity.

Sam had continued praying every day, even from the Cage, and sometimes Yaasriel wished he would stop, because the images of Hell and torture and _ice cold_ that floated Heavenward were too terrible to contemplate.

Mostly it had been "_please God please anybody please make it stop please—"._ On rare occasions of lucidity, it turned into _"please forgive me"_ and _"please let Dean be happy."_

Months passed on Earth and a century passed in Hell. Sometimes Sam's English had slipped in and out of the Enochain spoken by the archangels, and Yaasriel stayed awake at night, staring into space, wondering if the boy who prayed from the deepest depths of damnation would ever be the same.

And he'd never felt more useless than when he had been sitting in his garden and the most faithful man he knew was wasting away with Lucifer. Even the Ineffable Name had seemed less Ineffable and more Insignificant. Not that he would ever mention such a thing to anyone else.

His small acts of kindness for the people of Paxton seemed far more meaningful now, because they made these humans invite him to dinner and wave at him on the street and smile, and humans' lives were too short to be spent doing anything but. And he did it all as Paul, without any angelic powers to speak of.

He straightened his back, because he would be proud to do his new duty for these humans. Even powerless, he would try to be no less of an angel.

When Yaasriel boarded the bus for Lexington, Nebraska and Flo waved goodbye from the bus stop steps, he decided that God had been right all along about the virtues of humans.

And he decided that he loved them, too.

_0-O-0_

In Holdrege, he had nearly jumped off the bus because he thought he saw the black outlines of wings sparking behind someone on the street. They had disappeared just as quickly, leaving him to wonder if he'd imagined it.

They crossed the state line into Kansas in an innocuous farmer's field, but he had run up to the driver and demanded to be let off this instant. There was no town, no house, no anything in sight except for a large swath of missing crops, the edge of which he barely caught over the tops of the cornstalks from his seat.

He ran, trampling plants but failing to feel guilty about it, and found what to most would look like scorch marks on a bed of flattened green stems.

To him, they looked like wings.

There was no body, but the dent where it had been was unmistakable.

Yaasriel knelt down, quest momentarily forgotten, and cried, hunched over and shaking under the weight of being alone after all.

_0-O-0_

_Welcome to Lebanon_ the sign read. It was made to look old, a sort of Stonehenge-like square arch from which a wooden sign hung, proclaiming _Center of the 48 States_ in smaller letters.

The bus depot was just like the others, a bit dingy and mostly empty, with a rack of pamphlets by the door. But Sam Winchester was close; Yaasriel could practically feel it in his bones.

He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, trying to recall the scraps of images and descriptions he'd heard from Sam of this "Men of Letters" headquarters, more commonly just called "the bunker." But never "home"; he'd been waiting, listening all the time as he hid from Heaven's civil war, expecting the word to slip out one day. But it never came, not even when Sam mentioned that _"Dean's nesting. Looks like he plans to be here for a while."_

He knew he was getting close when the plains turned lightly wooded. The lane he was on turned to more of a gravel path, but he'd never felt more certain about something.

He noticed his hands were trembling, and he had to pause, allowing the realization that he was nervous to settle over him. _What if he doesn't want to see any more angels? What if he doesn't care about you? What if he blames you for not helping more?_

The trees rustled overhead with a warm breeze, and he kept walking until the back end of a big black car he instinctively identified as _Impala_ appeared around the bend. There was no room for nerves, not here, not when the strongest man he knew was not fifty feet away.

Yaasriel squared his thin shoulders and knocked.

When no response came for a minute afterwards, he wondered if the door was too thick, if the Winchesters were elsewhere, or if he'd knocked too quietly, and he was just about to try again when the entry all but flew open and he found himself doused with water.

Check that, holy water. He may not have been an angel anymore, but he sure knew how to recognize holy water when he saw it. _Was drenched in it._

"Who are you?" growled a voice, booking no argument. "And what are you doing here?"

Yaasriel wiped his eyes with the sopping sleeves of his jacket, doing his best to blink away the water to get a clearer picture of the man before him.

_Tall, but not overly so, short hair, green eyes._ And holding a shotgun, leveled at his head. Oh, he knew this man.

"Are you Dean Winchester?"

The man's eyes narrowed further. "What's it to you, buddy?"

"I am looking for Sam Winchester." _Look at him, touch his shoulder, hear his voice in person, anything._ Just to reassure himself that he was there and real, this impossibly noble, impossibly brave man.

If anything though, Dean tensed. "What do you want with Sammy?" he all but hissed.

Yaasriel held up his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "I just wish to speak with him."

"Well, I've never met you before in my life, so you're sure as hell not getting near my brother until I say so."

"Dean?"

This was a new, gravelly voice from behind the elder Winchester, but one Yaasriel vaguely recognized. In the doorway appeared another man, older, with a brown goatee and plaid shirt and jeans that were pretty similar to what Dean wore. Blue eyes widened as the newcomer took in Yaasriel.

"You are... the keeper of the Holy Pencils."

"You know this joker, Cas?"

_Cas._ That clicked. "And you are Castiel," he replied, addressing a man he knew he should despise by all angelic standards (for working with demons, for trying to replace their Father, for releasing the Leviathan, for betraying them all), but… he had helped the Winchesters, was still trying to help them.

"Wait... are you saying this dude's an angel?" Dean asked, incredulous, but the gun was lowering.

"Or used to be," Castiel whispered, and there was deep pain in his eyes. "I am so sorry."

The reminder of the loss of his Grace sent a stab of pain through his chest, but it was duller than it had been. He shrugged, a gesture he'd picked up from the humans. "I am alive. And I wish to meet Sam Winchester."

Wordlessly, Castiel stepped aside, ignoring Dean's protests. They didn't sound too heartfelt anyway; Dean Winchester trusted his angel friend, as simple as that (not to mention that he was certain Dean could easily incapacitate his own current human form at will, skinny as it was). The trust probably increased when he passed through the Devil's Trap painted on the ceiling without a problem.

He walked the bunker's hallways like he knew them because he did, remembering their turns from Sam, who was right where he expected him to be: at the large table in the main hall, face buried in a pile of books. But he glanced up when Yaasriel entered, and he was certain his heart would pound right out of his chest when hazel eyes locked onto his.

Instantly the suspicion rose, identical to his brother's but less openly hostile. "Who are you?" he demanded, standing, and Yaasriel had never before appreciated how tall Sam Winchester was.

Dean Winchester and Castiel had shadowed him in, but they fell out of focus as everything he'd wanted to say, meant to say, planned on bus rides across states to say, flew out of his head.

"My name is Yaasriel, but Miss Flo called me Paul," he managed.

Sam's eyes widened a bit at that. "An angel?"

"Fallen angel," Dean supplied, because Yaasriel's mouth felt like sandpaper.

"I don't think we've met yet," Sam spoke kindly, crossing the distance between them in three steps and sticking out a hand. "I'm Sam. Nice to meet you."

But Yaasriel ignored the hand, because they _had_ met. "I know you already," he replied, and he could almost see Sam's eyes shuttering as his smile went slack.

"I guess you would," was all he said, hand dropping, and _no, no, this was wrong._

"We met when you were six years old," Yaasriel burst, "and you were staying with your father's friend. Pastor Jim. You spoke, and I listened because no one else cared that much and my brothers always assumed I had spare time."

Sam looked confused, but Yaasriel pressed on, because this felt like the most important thing he'd ever done. "And I heard you, on every Christmas, when you left your family, after Jessica Moore died, even when your brother sacrificed his soul... every day when you spoke, I listened," he trailed off, but Sam's face was clearing, bafflement giving way to something else.

"And I wanted to help, I tried to help, even when my family turned against you during the Apocalypse, because you are a good person, Sam Winchester, but I'm a mostly useless angel even with my Holy Pencils, and I'm _sorry_."

Dean and Castiel had moved to stand near Sam, but it was Castiel voiced the thought that hung like mist in the room.

"You are the angel who heard his prayers."

And all Yaasriel could do was nod, because his mouth had seized up again and Sam was staring, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

"So why'd you come here?" Dean interjected, but his voice has lost its edge.

"I—I just... couldn't think of anywhere else," he answered lamely, but Sam didn't seem to care.

"You listened to... all of them? Even when... from Hell?"

He nodded again, but Sam really looked like he might cry, and Yaasriel was really not ready to deal with crying humans. "I just wanted to tell you that I do not blame you for anything. It is not much now, but I understood your intentions, and they were all good. You are the bravest, most honorable person I have ever met, and... I thought you needed to know that."

The room fell silent, and Yaasriel found himself unsure of what to do. He paused for a breath.

"I suppose I shall... be going now. I have said what I came to say."

He turned to leave, but stopped as a hand grabbed his shoulder and he knew it was Sam's without even needing to look.

"No, please... you can stay," he said quietly. Yaasriel turned to face him and Sam was smiling, faint dimples denting his cheeks.

"Stay, we have plenty of room," he insisted, stronger now. "And thank you."

"Why?" Yaasriel asked, because he wasn't the one who had gone to Hell to save the world.

"For listening," came the simple answer, and Yaasiel no longer felt quite so powerless after all.

_0-O-0_

The bunker quickly became the strangest place he'd ever lived, and considering that it was also the third, there wasn't really much contest.

He'd wake up in his guest bedroom to the sound of Dean bickering with Kevin Tran (who he remembered vaguely was a Prophet of the Lord) about the merits of bacon versus ham in omelets. He would dress, enter the kitchen and sit across from Castiel, who prepared a second cup of coffee as a habit now. Then Sam would enter, Dean would stop arguing to fuss over him ("_I'm not fussing, wingless wonder, I'm reminding the idiot to take his damn painkillers!"_), and Sam would brush him off to sit beside Yaasriel, always greeting him with a smile.

And then there was Crowley, former King of Hell, who Yaasriel gathered had been "cured" somehow, but the details supplied were few and far between. He mostly sat in his room (_"Yes, he has a room. He's not going anywhere, sticking him in the dungeon was a waste of space."_) and wallowed in misery, but he came out at random for food.

The table didn't have conversation so much as routine back-and-forths between people who knew each other so well that nothing they said was new. It had made Yaasriel feel a little awkward to witness at first, because scars ran so deep between all of them he didn't even know where to begin, but they included him like he'd been there all along.

_Maybe you have._

"So, wingless wonder," Dean began, and Yaasriel turned away from Castiel to face him because he'd learned quickly that _wingless wonder_ meant him, "what did you do upstairs, aside from listening to Sasquatch over there mope?"

"I was the keeper of the Holy Pencils," he replied, and Dean smirked.

"Holy Pencils?" he parroted.

"Yes. I was the scribe of the Ineffable Name."

"Imagine that, Sammy," Dean quipped, "you got to pray to the nerdy angel. Who'da guessed?"

"I'm sure what Yaasriel did was important," Castiel said. "Every part of Heaven was important."

Yaasriel recognized the frown on Castiel's lips from weeks of hearing him apologize profusely for causing the Fall, and that was his cue to play his part in the strange dynamic of life in the bunker. "Actually, it was rather dull. Lots of work, but low job satisfaction."

That was a lie, because he'd felt important for thousands of years thanks to that job, but it made Dean laugh and Castiel smile, and that was what was mattered. Glancing to his left, he caught sight of Sam smiling too, omelet momentarily forgotten, and that was the most important thing.

He might no longer have his angelic purpose, but he had Sam Winchester, a human on the mend whose heart he knew better than anyone else's, plus his also-mending brother, a similarly fallen angel, a Prophet, a mostly-cured demon, and a "new lease on life," as Sam put it. And he knew he wanted to protect them all, not out of duty to humanity or his Father but just _because, _and that was all that mattered.

* * *

So, that's that.

The initial prompt was a lot simpler, but I kind of took the idea of Sam's angel and ran with it. It wound up focusing more on Yaasriel's experience as he, a loyal and slightly cowardly angel, deals with falling. Sam's prayers over the years follow the canon timeline through the most recent season, and Yaasriel wouldn't have heard any more post-Fall (though I imagine Sam would pray anyway). Also, Yaasriel really is the obscure angel of the Holy Pencils, and his job was to spend all day every day carving the Ineffable Name of God into various scraps (of what? I don't know). Fun stuff, that.

I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to drop a review! Thanks for reading!


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